Customizing Opera 26

I would like to configure Opera so that new pages and tabs do not display either the default search bar or speed dial boxes - I'm looking to display my custom background either with or without the speed dial/discover/bookmarks sidebar. Can this be done? Setting my homepage to About:Blank simply returns a blank white window.

Also, is there a listing of Opera's internal pages available? If so, where can I get it? It seems to me that both Chrome and Firefox provide this detailed information more readily than does Opera - unless I've totally missed an Opera support/documentation channel...